Moms take on extra work in down economy

San Francisco mom Esther Lee gave birth to her second child, Cory, in January and Lee is already preparing to return to work in March. She’s thankful that her employer, the Equality Federation, is open to a flexible schedule and might even allow her to bring Cory into the office, but still she’s taking only six weeks off. After she had her first child, Christopher, now 3, she stayed home for 18 months.

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“But those were different times,” Lee says. “With the economy being so shakey I feel pressure to return to the office as soon as possible.”

Lee and her partner carry a mortgage for a Noe Valley home. They’re also paying for an independent school. Lee’s parents help out with tuition but Lee worries about her parent’s financial situation.

How does Lee feel about returning to work? She feels lucky that she enjoys her job at an LGBT advocacy group and she has a “terrific and open-minded boss,” but she can’t help but feel guilty. “Our poor second child,” Lee says. “He’s getting all the hand-me-down clothes. He’s going into daycare immediately. He’ll need to learn to take the bottle. I only breastfed Christopher.”

Lee isn’t alone. In this down economy, more and more women are feeling pressure to return to work. Maybe their partners lost their jobs, or they’re trying to help out with a mortgage payment that recently adjusted to a higher rate. Or maybe they’re hoping to make the switch from contract work to a full-time gig that’s more stable and predictable.

Amy Keroes, founder and CEO of MommyTrack’d, says she’s hearing from more moms who are looking for advice and networking contacts to help them get back into the workforce. “It has really picked up in the last couple months,” says Keroes, whose Web site is a gathering place for working moms.

Jill Ater, founder and COO of 10 til 2 (a national part-time placement service), says that over the past three months applications are up 25 percent compared to the same time period last year. Some 88 percent of 10 til 2’s clients are women. “We’re hearing from a lot of women who are concerned about finances,” Ater says. “They’re asking if they can continue to lead their current lifestyles without working and the answer is that they have to go back to work.”

At Flexperience, a Bay Area company helping people find flexible work situations, president and co-founder Sally Thornton is noticing that moms are taking on extra work. “We’re finding that our consultants–80 percent of whom are working moms–are more flexible in dialing up their hours,” Thornton says. “Since they’ve kept their skills current with project-based work, more than 65 percent are now wanting to do full-time work to balance out the uncertainty with their partner’s income. On the other side, leading Bay Area companies are calling us for ideas on how to minimize layoffs through flexible work programs–so they are creatively addressing the economic uncertainty.”

Mill Valley mom Laura Spence is one of those women looking for a job. Just last weekend, she spent four hours at the library updating her resume. “I’m looking at my resume and I really haven’t done that much in the past few years compared to these people who have been working nonstop,” Spence says. “I’m worried about that ‘hole’ in my resume.”

Spence has been contracting ever since she had her first son, Jack, who is now 4 years old (her second, Sam, is 20 months). But she’s working two days on average and it’s just not enough to help her husband, whose job is stable (“I feel so lucky”), make mortgage payments. She would ideally like a part-time office job–about 30 hours a week.

Plus, Spence wants more stability. “With contracting, if the work is plentiful, I can make more working less. But there’s no consistency. You have these really big months with tons of work and then there are those really slow months. And it has slowed down the last couple months. In this economy, I want to know what I’m going to make every month.”

A Novato mom, who asked not to be identified, is also on the hunt for a job, only her husband’s work isn’t stable. “His business has taken quite a beating,” she says. “His overhead is substantial so most of what he’s making right now is helping to maintain the business.”

As a result, this Novato mother in her mid-40s is looking for a full-time job after staying at home for nearly 10 years. “My husband and I talked about this a lot and we realized that full-time is really the only option that makes sense,” she says. “We will have to put both boys in aftercare programs after school and working part-time would only serve to pay for those programs with not much left over. We have lots of bills to pay. We have a mortgage. We send our older son to a private school, and we have older dogs with expensive medical bills.”

How does she feel about putting her 4-year-old in full-time daycare? “He’s a gregarious, social child, so I know that he’ll do well,” she says. “But no doubt, it will be a long day for him. He’s very close to me so I’ll probably feel pretty sad. Right now, he’s so little and he won’t be little for long.”

Colette DeDonato is also preparing to let go of her leisurely days at home with her 4-year-old. She and her husband have faced tremendous financial struggles. Their house in Oakland has been on the market for nearly a year and a half. They nearly lost the house in foreclosure, but they’re hoping to resolve the situation with a short sale, which means the sale will fall short of the amount on the mortgage and the lender will agree to the shrunken payoff.

The trouble started when Colette’s husband was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, an inflammatory disease of the digestive system. “He was always able to support us as a carpenter and he was the primary breadwinner while I did some freelance work as a writer and editor,” DeDonato says. “But then he got sick and he had to work less. And because of the down economy, my freelance work started to drop off.”

To make ends meet, Collette and her husband moved to Santa Cruz, where they can get help from family. Colette’s husband works occasionally when his symptoms subside and she’s looking for a job. “If I can get a full-time job right now, it’ll be great,” she says. “It’s not what I had originally planned on. I had planned to be at home with my daughter and to be really involved in her school but at this point I have no choice but to return to work.”

Oakland mom AnnaMae Wilson actually did have a choice. For the past three years, the mother of two girls has enjoyed a part-time, job-share situation. “I felt truly blessed that I was able to have the best of both worlds–feeling fulfilled with both a well paying, satisfying career and the ability to volunteer in my kids’ classrooms, take them to gymnastics, and host playdates on my days off,” Wilson says. “It also allowed me a teeny bit of ‘me’ time.”

And then her employer went through a round of layoffs and the job-share was eliminated. Wilson’s job-share partner was laid off and Wilson was offered a full-time position. What to do?

“They gave me two weeks to decide whether I wanted to return to full-time capacity or resign,” Wilson says. “I agonized for the full two full weeks over what to do because both my husband and I did not want our kids in school from 8 to 6 everyday. Both my husband and I commute over a bridge and 45-plus minutes to our jobs, we didn’t see how we could have the level of work-life balance we want. On the other hand, it seemed crazy to quit a good job at a stable company when the economy is so crazy. My husband works in an industry which is not so stable. He is at a new company and worries that if they go through layoffs he could be the victim of a ‘last-hired, first-fired’ sort of situation.”

In the end, Wilson negotiated a flexible schedule with her boss. She’ll be working from home a few days a week and will be able to pick up her kids from school early on Thursdays and Fridays. “I’m still grieving the loss of the job-share and hoping that I can find a similar situation again,” she says. “But for now, I start back full-time on March 2, and I’m dreading it.”